1.D.75 The Synthetic Pillar Arene Backbone Tubular Peptide (PAB-TP) Family

A series of tubular molecules with different lengths have been synthesized by attaching Trp-incorporated peptides to the pillar[5]arene backbone (Zhang et al. 2017). The tubular molecules are able to insert into the lipid bilayer to form unimolecular transmembrane channels. One of the channels has been shown to specifically insert into the bilayer of Gram-positive bacteria, but cannot insert into the membranes of mammalian rat erythrocytes even at the high concentration of 100 mum.  As a result of this high selectivity, the channel exhibits efficient antimicrobial activity for the Gram-positive bacteria but low hemolytic toxicity for mammalian erythrocytes (Zhang et al. 2017).